Uneasy Ryders

Remember Valderrama?

For the U.S. Ryder Cup team, it’s hard to forget the place.

Right there on the Costa del Sol, on the doorstep of the Mediterranean, a stone’s throw from the Rock of Gibraltar, on a course in the middle of a bunch of cork trees, the U.S. got popped, rocked, overrun and generally routed.

Sure, the final margin was only one point, 14 1/2-13 1/2, but Europe’s victory was a lot bigger than that and its impact has been just as large.

It has been two years since that defeat, but it’s not something you can put out of your mind easily.

Consider, for instance, the case of the captain. Tom Kite put on a happy face right up to the event, smiled his way through it, then when he was criticized for his Mr. Feel Good approach in the face of a crushing defeat, he went the other way and needed months to find his sense of humor again.

“When we lost, I couldn’t figure out how we lost,” Kite said. “I still can’t.”

Of course, veteran Ryder Cup followers have no such problems. The U.S. defeat followed a familiar formula.

You take an over-hyped, heavily favored team into a format that it doesn’t usually play and it gets surprised by an overachieving, underappreciated bunch of semi-nobodies.

Yeah, that will do it just about every time. So when the Ryder Cup begins Friday at the Country Club here, we’re going to relive some very good memories--or very bad ones.

There have been other U.S. defeats--Europe has either won or tied and retained the Ryder Cup five of the last seven times the sides have met. So even though the U.S. was not entirely unaccustomed to losing in 1997, the whole Valderrama experience was so, well, upsetting.

From the start, not much went right for the U.S. team.

Kite wanted his players to get accustomed to the course, but only three did--Mark O’Meara, Tiger Woods and Davis Love III. He studied the local weather charts for the tournament dates for the previous 10 years and found it to be as dry as the sand in a bunker. It rained all week.

At the end of the second day’s play, it was all but over. Europe had a 10 1/2-5 1/2 lead, which meant the U.S. had to get nine points in the 12 singles matches on the third and last day. The U.S. got eight.

Kite’s team was loaded with the winners of three of the year’s four majors--Woods, Justin Leonard and Love--and they produced a 1-9-3 record.

That obviously came as a great surprise to Kite.

“Or maybe the biggest surprise was that our only three players with winning records were Scott Hoch, Jeff Maggert and Lee Janzen,” Kite said.

Actually, the biggest surprise was that Seve Ballesteros couldn’t be everywhere at once. He seemed to be. While Kite was busy giving friends and Michael Jordan rides on his golf cart, like a part-time chauffeur, the European captain was tearing around Valderrama like a madman.

It was left to Ballesteros to offer the final word. He was asked to explain the result.

“This is the game of golf,” he said. “Sometimes there is no explanation.”

There was a very simple explanation for a lot of what went on. The European players putted better. Maybe it was because they knew the course better--the Volvo Masters made a regular stop there--but the ball sure went into the hole when it had a chance. The same was not true for the U.S. players.

Woods actually putted his ball off the green and into the water at No. 17 in a four-ball match, and Woods and O’Meara wound up losing to Lee Westwood and Nick Faldo, 2 and 1.

Brad Faxon, the team’s best putter, went 35 holes without a birdie.

Phil Mickelson missed a seven-footer at No. 13, an eight-footer at No. 14 and a six-footer at No. 17.

When the second-day’s play finally ended, about 30 minutes before a deluge, the whole Ryder Cup thing had acquired a new name: Shock at the Rock.

Anybody can lose, Woods said.

“It’s called golf,” he said. “You can’t always win.”

Well, it’s still called golf, but this time, the maxim is a little different for the U.S. players. They’re trying to prove you can’t always lose.

UNITED STATES vs. EUROPE

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

The Country Club

Brookline, Mass.

TV: USA, NBC